The IBM layoff, to me, is more restructuring itself to the new economy.
No doubt, the manufacturing sectors are moving off shore. The more companies move off shore; the less the supply of talents. The momentum will just keep it going. How many fabrication are being done in the Silicon Valley? Silicon Valley today is hardly doing any semi-conductor related work. The current big Work-In-Progress are either cloud-related or social networking.
I'm sorry to hear the news. It is inevitable to any economy. I'm pretty sure talents who suffer today because of the layoff will find a way out to invent the next big thing. Stay Positive. ;)

Buddy, this is a tech site not a site for pushing misguided politics. Taxes are not the root cause. Decreasing taxes may change the time constant, but you still would eventually end up where we are today. I will give you some credit though, because you serendipitously provided a major cause in you asinine rhetorical question.
“For those of you over the age of 35, did you ever think you'd see the day where communist/former communists countries like China and Russia have lower taxes and a more pro-business attitude than the US????”
Maybe some people should think a little more????

I fear the average American totally misunderstands what it means when a high tech company goes off shore. Nearly all think it because of the lower cost of wages That would be true if making fine geometry integrated circuits were labor intensive but as we EEs know, the fewer humans in your fab, the better. Still others think that environmental issues are central to the decision. China has come a long way and has certainly tightened up unfettered dumping, the days of dumping industrial waste into the nearest stream are over. The 900lb gorillas are taxes and governmental bureaucracy. For those of you over the age of 35, did you ever think you'd see the day where communist/former communists countries like China and Russia have lower taxes and a more pro-business attitude than the US????

What do you mean government isn't making it easy? It was reported that NYS was giving IBM nearly $1million in tax breaks *per*job* it created in Albany. That is likely a high figure, but still, the government has been bank rolling IBM's semiconductor business for years.

Instead of selling technology to Foundries ( mostly offshore ) IBM should have chased the consumer SoC Foundry business itself. Even though low margin, these high volume products would have generated enough revenue to pay for R&D and next node Fabs.

IBM is making a strategic exit from PowerPC and the embedded marketplace; they have announced EOL of nearly all of their PPC750 line of processors by the end of 2013. Wonder why they chose to exit that business - I thought their parts and support were excellent.